Mcmorrow Takes Step Into History

Mary Ann G. McMorrow, a veteran Cook County judge, broke a 173-year-old gender barrier Monday when she was sworn in as the first female justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.

``During the campaign, I became acutely aware of the importance to women to have a competent woman serve`` on the state Supreme Court, said McMorrow, after she was administered the oath of office by retired Justice Daniel Ward. ``I wish you could have seen the hope in their eyes and heard their voices as they looked to me to break the 173-year barrier, and the hurt that accompanied that barrier,`` she told a courtroom crowded with family members, judicial colleagues, lawyers and others.

McMorrow, 62, was one of three justices sworn in Monday as new members of the state`s high court.

Her ceremony was held in Chicago, in the Supreme Court`s courtroom on the 30th floor of the Daley Center. The other new justices, Moses Harrison II and John Nickels, took their oaths during a ceremony in the Supreme Court building in Springfield.

The three were Appellate Court judges before their election last month to the Supreme Court.

McMorrow was the only woman in her class at Loyola University School of Law in the early 1950s. She also was the first woman to prosecute serious crimes in Cook County as an assistant state`s attorney. She has been a judge since 1976.

McMorrow was praised in prayer, speeches, poetry and even song during a 90-minute swearing-in ceremony.

Referring to the court`s 19th Century decision to refuse a license to practice law to a woman, Ward said the ceremony was ``an act of contrition for a sin committed by the Supreme Court many years ago.``

In turn, McMorrow promised a leadership ``based on consensus-building, reconciliation and cooperation, rather than on competition, a more sensitive leadership which I believe the human race needs. Women will leave this kind of leadership as our legacy.``

In Springfield, the swearing-in of Nickels and Harrison marked one of the rare times that applause echoed from inside the ornate Supreme Court courtroom-also filled with family, friends and political supporters.

``Many of the decisions that I will be called upon to make will be lasting and far-reaching,`` said Nickels, 61, of Maple Park in De Kalb County. ``As I have in the past, when confronted with choices and opportunities, I will continue to seek the knowledge and experience that forges the strength of character necessary to make those decisions.``

Harrison thanked family and friends and, in an emotional speech, said he had wished his father, who died three years ago, could have been present.

``It is my agenda and my only agenda to make a sound rule of law,`` he said.

Harrison, 60, of Caseyville in St. Clair County, had been an appellate judge since 1979.